A Sweet Take on IronViz

This article
originally appeared as a guest blog (and my first blog post) on my brother’s
website at http://www.kenflerlage.com in July 2018.

Well, what can I say…I’m a sucker for a
challenge. When I was a kid, I would do just about anything on a dare. In
elementary school, kids would dare me to combine foods (which should not be
combined) and eat them. I was always the kid who threw something at a car and
ran (though I’m not proud of it). About 10 years back while on the golf course,
I ate a live cicada for a dollar. And at any given time, I will put 4 quarters
up a single nostril as long as you provide the quarters (make sure to bring
your quarters to TC18!)I’m a sucker for
a challenge. That’s why, when Andy Cotgreave challenged the Twitter community
to visualize Recaman’s Sequence in Tableau, well I couldn’t resist (nor could
my brother – read about both of our experiences here:Two Approaches to Building the Recamán Sequence in Tableau). And now Andy Cotgreave has presented another
challenge—write about your IronViz experience. This is a bit different than
eating a live cicada or pudding tacos, but challenge accepted!Please note that despite the recent Twitter
rumors, I will not be challenging Andy to a magic showdown. He is far too good,
I am far too bad (and completely out of practice) and I am fearful that he will
make the rest of my hair disappear #BaldiesDoData. Okay, on with the IronViz
experience.

As many of you know, this is ALL new to me. My
first time touching Tableau was on Feb 26, 2018 when my twin brother and Zen
Master, Ken Flerlage, gave me a three hour lesson and I was hooked!At that point, it was incomprehensible that I
would get third place and Best New Entrant for The Lorax in my first IronViz
feeder just two months later. When the second feeder of 2018 was announced, I
knew that I had been there before, I was no longer eligible for Best New
Entrant and it was time to step up my game.

I am in Healthcare and when the Health and
Well-Being topic was announced, a lot of ideas came to mind, but none of them
excited me. I shared the feeder topic with a colleague (a pharmacist who isn’t
excited about data, but is certainly interested in Tableau). We talked through
a couple of concepts and landed on the idea of Candy Land. It would allow for some
cool navigation and provide the flexibility of smaller dashboards. The original
idea was to focus on various aspects of health and well-being, but later I
decided that since it was Candy Land, it should focus solely on sugar and the
dangers of eating too much of it. (Besides, I LOVE candy!!!!)

However, I had one problem—I had absolutely no
clue how to allow my game piece to navigate around the board. I had to have the
proof of concept before even beginning to look for data. I thought that I could
use a scatter plot and with some trial and error, plot the points related to
the squares I wanted the game piece to land on (yeah, stinkin’ newbie). But
then I realized that transparent sheets were not yet available which would make
this very difficult.

I started digging and found an article from Ryan Sleeper
(How to Map Any Background Image in Tableau) which talks about how you can map
a background image with other images overlaid without the need for transparent
sheets. It was EXACTLY what I needed; I LOVE you, Ryan Sleeper!I tried it and it worked perfectly. I then
used his annotate trick (in the same article) to find the coordinates of where
I wanted my game piece to land, added those points to my spreadsheet, uploaded
it. I then used a filter to make that same game piece shape seemingly move across
the board. (In reality, I just used the same custom shape at each point and
allowed the user to filter between those points).

From there, I
wanted the user to be able to click on the spot on the path to jump to a
dashboard that presented data on sugar intake. So how would I set it up so that
a user could click on something and jump to something else?Again, this newbie didn’t have a clue,
although I was certain it was possible. With a bit of research, I found the following
article from Nicco Cirone on The Data School website: Creating Dashboard Navigator Buttons. It shows you how you can use a custom shape as a chart then
use a dashboard filter action to navigate to a different tab within that
visualization (the key is to allow it to show tabs). Armed with this
information, I knew I could create a small custom shape or even just a filled
square that matched the color of the spot I wanted the user to click on (see
below). That way you couldn’t see it because it blended in, but you could click
on it. By clicking on it, it would evoke a dashboard action to jump you to a
new dashboard. Another button could be added to allow you to move from that
dashboard back to the main game board. That was the proof of concept that I
needed as navigation was 100% within the game and there was no reason to use
the tabs whatsoever (although it was necessary to show them in order for it to
work).

From there, it
all came together like clockwork. Yeah right…I struggled mightily on the very
first dashboard (shown below). The first chart went smoothly. It looked like a
bar chart, but I wanted it to look like sugar. To do this, I created it as a
scatter plot with randomized x y coordinates within the space where the bar
would have been. As an example, the data for the year 1700, the x coordinate
ranged between 1650 and 1750 and the y coordinate ranged between 0 and 5. For
the points, I simply used a white square (and the number of points was
reflective of 10 times the measure, i.e. 5 grams in 1700 = 50 points).

But it was the
next chart (the peppermints) that gave me nightmares. I originally laid it out
in columns and rows and showed both the figure in 1700 (like one and a half
peppermints) along with the measure in 2009. I also wanted to show various
comparisons like peppermints, cookies, cans of soda, etc. Here is where it all
fell apart. It looked awful. Everything I did looked like complete garbage. I probably
fiddled with this chart for 3 hours across several days. I had pretty much
gotten nothing done. I was 99% sure that I was going to scrap it (this is not
an exaggeration, but a fact). I simply could not get it to work…I hated it!I stopped working on it for several days.

At some point
during those days of not touching it, I saw Lindsay Betzendahl’s Influenza viz
of the day. It showed seasonal influenza trends over numerous years. Instead of
arranging it horizontally, she visualized it in a circular pattern (shown below
- click to see the full viz).

That was
it!!!That was my light bulb moment.
Forget the rows and columns—I would place it in a circular pattern!And it worked…it looked exactly like I wanted
it to. Thank you so much for the inspiration, Lindsay!!!!(As a side note, this is what makes Tableau
so great. Yes, it is an amazing tool and so fun to use, but it’s the community
that takes it to the next level). Okay, enough of the mushy stuff!Here’s how it ended up looking:

From there, things actually did go relatively
smoothly. Sure, I had a handful of challenges and things not looking the way I
wanted, but generally I just kept cranking along. Below I will touch on some of
the charts in each dashboard, but won’t go into detail.

Nine Spoons of Sugar:the test tubes and percentages for youth and
adults are both filled shape charts (see blog for more details, see Filled Shape Charts).

Sugar in a Rush:For the McDonalds chart, I had to determine the x y coordinates. I
decided to try Spotify's Coordinator tool. This site allows you to upload and
image and it will provide you with the x y coordinates associated with that
image. I set it to use 260 points (same as the number of menu items). Once I
had the coordinates, I sorted the y coordinate in descending order. I then
sorted the McDonalds menu item list in descending order of sugar content. I
then combined the lists where the smallest y coordinate matched up with the
item with the least amount of sugar. I plotted the points in Tableau, changed
the shapes to yellow circles (with the exception of the bottom shapes where I
used squares to block off the bottom) and there you have it!A McDonalds chart showing all their menu
items as it relates to sugar content.

The Sweetest Country:this is my favorite dashboard in this viz.
The map is simple, but the sugar jar took a bit more time. I wanted to do
another filled shape chart, but I couldn’t find a good sugar jar image. So, I
drew it myself in PowerPoint. I pieced together two concentric circles and a
couple of gray, rounded rectangles. I then trimmed it up on Paint.net and added
transparency within the jar itself. It came out very nice and tied in
interactively with the map.

Sugar Can Do That:This dashboard was pretty simple. I wanted to
show health complications where too much sugar may be a factor. In addition, I
wanted to do it like a doctor’s chart where it was pointing to the place on the
human body that was affected. So why not use a man…a gingerbread man!From there, I downloaded several icons from
The Noun Project and utilized them as custom shapes with tool tips that explain
each health complication.

Give Me Some Sugar:this chart is simply two scatter plots. The
first shows sugar cubes at x y coordinate of 0, 0. Then rats are positioned in
a circular pattern around the sugar. The rats are one image that I rotated 10
degrees and saved, then 10 more degrees and saved, etc. In total, there are 36
rat images all facing in different directions. This was replicated for the
cocaine chart.

Now You Are Stuck:some people were disappointed that they
didn’t get to finish the game, but I loved the idea of viewers getting stuck
with Lord Licorice where there is a call to action to improve your health (or
help someone else improve their health). This dashboard is nothing other than
some image work and the only “chart” is the custom information button showing
the sources I utilized.

The end result
was a viz that focused on an important health topic in a very fun and
interactive way. It was a fun one to create and an incredible learning
experience. If you have any questions on any part of the viz, certainly feel
free to contact me. Now I’m off to go eat a half dozen cookies and wash it down
with a couple of sodas…NOT!

This article originally appeared as a guest blog (and my first blog
post) on my brother’s website at http://www.kenflerlage.com in July 2018.